Whew! I joined my ship last June 27 or almost two weeks now and a lot of things have already happened on board. I was busy and is therefore lagging behind now in my writing. Anyway, I deemed it right but proper to start with featuring the ship I’m on to give you an idea of what kind of world I have when not at home.
Below are the pictures of my ship and the pitch write-up to our Charterer, Technip, by the Discovery Channel Crew that featured our ship in one of their mighty ship episodes on Discovery Channel.
SKANDI ARCTIC
saturation dive support ship
series 4 – episode 3
To perform the world’s most dangerous job… you need all the support you can get.
On the edge of Earth’s final frontier is a new breed of ship… the saturation dive support vessel. The biggest, the best and the newest is Skandi Arctic. Consider her the mother ship for a team of 21st century aquanauts who work deep beneath the ocean’s surface on jobs considered, at least on this planet, as the most dangerous in the world.
Up to 24 divers live and breathe in a pressurized habitat on Skandi Arctic’s deck that looks like it belongs on Mars. In fact, it’s the largest, most advanced saturation system afloat! Twice a day, dive teams are transported below by diving bells to work exclusively in a dark, dangerous watery world. Each time they dive they put their lives at risk. If they lose oxygen, pressure, or heat in their suits, it could be a matter of life or death. Up on deck, the job of Skandi Arctic’s highly trained 85+crew is to support the divers to get the job done… hence the term, saturation dive support ship. For both the divers and the ship’s crew the stakes are high, the job dangerous, and the technology they use positively space age.
On this episode of Discovery Channel’s successful, internationally acclaimed series Mighty Ships, Skandi Arctic will journey into the North Sea roughly 80-120 kilometers off the west of Norway to perform maintenance on a subsea gas pipeline network 150 meters below the surface.
Her dive teams will work 24/7 replacing and/or repairing sensors on the pipeline installations. Their biggest
challenge, while wearing hi-tech dive suits will be to locate, access, disassemble and then replace the sensors in water temperatures of 5 degrees Celsius or less. Add in the factors of poor visibility and cumbersome equipment and every dive will be like trying to thread a needle in the dark wearing baking mitts.
For 14 days, our Mighty Ship camera team will “live and breathe” the job of the ship, her crew, and the divers. It will be a real team effort. While the divers work submerged for 6 hours at a time, Skandi’s crew must maintain safe operation of the habitat and the ship over the project site.
From the time the ship arrives in Stavanger, Norway, to the end of the divers 1st shift when they’re flown off by helicopter, our cameras will capture in intimate, gritty detail how this state of the art ship, her determined crew and fearless dive teams safely perform their amazing and dangerous jobs of repairing a subsea pipeline. It’s a mighty job for a mighty ship and another great episode of Mighty Ships.
Amazing isn’t it?
World Mariner 